"Short, accurate and precise." André Villas-Boas chose these words not to describe the style of a hitman, but his meetings over the past six days with Roman Abramovich, though is was tempting to draw the link between the two.

Chelsea's Russian owner is putting his hands back on the club, with his $5bn high court litigation battle with his former business associate Boris Berezovsky no longer in session, to seemingly reinforce one of the football week's major themes: employers flexing their muscles over their managers.

Villas-Boas also had an admission, which sounded rather ominous. "It is not a very honourable position for the dimension of this club," he said, on the subject of the team's Premier League position of fourth and the target for the remainder of the season being merely to hang on to it. Did Abramovich share the feeling of dishonour? "Yes. I think so," Villas-Boas said.

Villas-Boas takes his team to Everton on Saturday for a fixture in which he intends to bounce back from the demoralising blow of surrendering a 3-0 lead to draw 3-3 at home to Manchester United last Sunday. He is aware that the previous time Abramovich travelled to Goodison Park for a Premier League fixture, on the final day of last season, he sacked Carlo Ancelotti shortly after full-time, taking his strike rate to five managers in eight years.

Ancelotti, who is in charge at Paris St-Germain, said on Wednesday that his life at Chelsea had become "intolerable" when Abramovich took a keener interest in the running of the club. Since Saturday, Abramovich has been at the training ground in Cobham almost every day, to talk to Villas-Boas about his sessions and tactics. He also addressed Villas-Boas and the players in the dressing-room after the United game.

Villas-Boas was given plenty of bullet-dodging practice at his weekly press briefing. When Abramovich shoots, he does not miss. "Regarding the presence of the owner, you can speculate whatever you want but for us, it is fantastic to have him here," Villas-Boas said. "It is not distracting, not at all. With physical presence, you get your ideas across better, which is good. The meetings have been good … short, accurate and precise.

"The objectives we have for this season are pretty much outlined. We have two competitions where we look better [the Champions League and FA Cup] and another competition where we have to dilute the damage and try to finish fourth, at least, which is not a very honourable position for the dimension of this club. Bearing in mind the rest, we focus on the same and a lot of focus on next year's progress as well."

Next year will represent the second of the three-year plan under Villas-Boas and the young Portuguese has no doubts that he will remain at the helm. His relationship with Abramovich has changed from his first spell at the club, when he worked as José Mourinho's opposition scout. "It was almost a salute relationship back then, nothing else," he said. "But now it's more active, very positive. He is a good person to share knowledge with, ask questions and try to give answers regarding what I do. I think it's legitimate. I would compare it to a normal club president/manager relationship."

Villas-Boas also spoke of Abramovich realising the need for patience – "There is great empathy and motivation for next year's project," he said – and, as if to illustrate the phase that Chelsea are in, he compared his substitutes' bench to United's from Sunday. He made one change, bringing on young Oriol Romeu while Sir Alex Ferguson introduced the proven Premier League quality of Javier Hernández, Paul Scholes and Park Ji-sung.

"I think we can win the title without massive investment … we have to find the right targets," Villas-Boas said. "For example, getting Oriol [from Barcelona] at €5m [£4.2m] was fantastic and you could not say that he is not up to Premier League standard. So it is possible. But normally, you prefer to bring top talent, which takes less time to adapt and can play straight away."

John Terry was out of sight, having been granted a short break to rest his injured knee – the captain will miss the Everton match, together with Ramires; Mikel John Obi, Frank Lampard and Ashley Cole return to contention. But Terry, who should return to face Birmingham City in the FA Cup on Saturday week, was not out of mind.

Villas-Boas was asked how he would feel if Abramovich told him who could and could not wear the captain's armband. "Firstly, that's not the case … we are speculating about a possible's owner's decision," Villas-Boas said. "I think that it is up to the managers to decide. The manager decides on appointing the captains or decides on the group appointing the captains. There are clubs that like to choose their own captains. With me, I was always able to appoint my captains."